The uprising has suffered over 16,000 deaths and many more wounded. The regime must go but will Iran fracture? (Photo by CARLOS JASSO / AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
This last weekend, an op-ed I wrote about Iran in the Wall Street Journal got hundreds of irate comments across various media. Some were threatening. Many clearly hadn’t read the piece but reacted to the provocative headline “A Fractured Iran Might Not Be So Bad”. Herewith I offer a response in this column to the more coherent critiques.
A moment to refute one rather lofty commenter who dismissed my thesis as the ramblings of an ‘armchair philosopher’. I have covered every country in the immediate region on the ground including Iran for nearly three decades, often at risk to my life – in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Forbes and other top outlets. That means Turkey, Iraq, Syria, the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia. Armchair?
To address upfront the cause of so much ire in the comments: the idea of accepting fragmentation was offered at the very last sentence of the op-ed “for the sake of regional and global peace” after a litany of arguments that led to that conclusion. The main argument, though, was fragmentation for the sake of peace among the population – that is, for the benefit of the people being massacred by a powerful central regime, now and in years past. And also to warn about bloodshed if civil war follows regime change, bloodshed between nationalists and those who’ve had enough of being tied to a constantly unstable country. One that has delivered nothing but grief to them.
But to begin at the beginning. The essay needed to be written because no prominent voices are addressing the distinct possibility that Iran’s ethnics might secede, chiefly the larger ones with kin across borders. The Azeris and Kurds for example, who make up over %35 percent of the population. There are other minorities aplenty, all in total numbering over %40 percent, or more, depending on whose stats you believe. Why is no one prominent saying all this? Because the mullah regime would use it against the uprising by claiming that it’s not a genuine popular phenomenon but rather one stoked from outside to break up Iran. The regime would also use the argument to claim the side of nationalism, and to divide the opposition between Perso-Iranians and the others. So no one prominent is talking about the topic. To speak the unspeakable (but real) – for that reason alone it was important to write the op-ed.
Numerous hotheads objected to my point that Iran’s borders had shape-shifted over the decades and centuries, and could do so again due to fragmentation. No doubt they read it as an attack on Iran as a civilization. But the truth is, Iran’s borders are an outcome of a series of wobbly agreements or, even worse, decisions made by others. The northern frontier with Azerbaijan, separating Azeris by a border, is really an outcome of Russian expansion and retraction largely in the 19th century. The British initially shared the occupation, first occupying the area further south, but later the whole.
They were responsible for drawing the border with Iraq, chiefly to separate and apportion oil reserves with a view to controlling them. That Iraq border was not officially ratified by treaty until 1974. So fungible was it, that Saddam Hussein initiated a war over it against Tehran post-Shah. Perhaps the most stable border is the one with Turkey, drawn largely in the 1600s, between the Safavids of Iran (a Turkic dynasty) and the Ottomans (also a Turkic dynasty). That border too wobbled well into the 1930s which ultimately left Mount Ararat inside Turkey.
This predicament of ethnic unrest across uneasy borders applies to most other countries in the Mideast – all post-imperial entities – and beyond. Not least Turkey and a fortiori Russia. So no one should assume that because your cosmopolitan columnist was born in Istanbul, that therefore this assessment of Iran’s borders is somehow biased and indicates a yearning for revanchism by Ankara. Quite a few responses argued just that. Readers of this column know how frequently it has criticized Erdogan – and argued that he’s taking his country down the same path as Iran. In fact, if the Kurds of Iran break free they will do so to unite with Turkey’s Kurds to create their own country. Which is why reports recently proliferated online that Erdogan has intervened to prevent the outside Kurds from supplying arms to the Iranian Kurds. Other reports claim that he has made a deal with President Trump to march troops into Iran to protect the populace.
And there’s the rub, because in reality nobody outside is actually or substantially helping defend the populace against the regime’s onslaught. So far some 17k dead and almost double injured. This can only end predictably with the regime surviving in some form and the protestors mown down in droves. As I pointed out in the op-ed, Iran is too important geopolitically for the uprising to be left alone to overturn the regime. For Russia, Iran helps bottle up Central Asia geographically, its trade and pipelines etc, thereby leaving a vast landmass dependent on Moscow’s stranglehold. Also Tehran supplies Shahed drones for use in Ukraine. In short, Putin is not about to let democracy take over in Iran. Meanwhile, reports proliferate of Iraqi Shiite militias coming in to help the regime.
Then there’s China: Beijing will not passively lose Iran’s oil having lost Venezuela. And so latest reports indicate that Chinese military cargo planes – at least 16 – have airlifted materiel to Iran, with more to come. No doubt to fortify the regime. Meantime who’s defending the protesters? All the noisy cheer-leading from afar while slaughter reigns on the ground and nothing is done to stop it,,, seems a lot more like irresponsible armchairing than the op-ed. The fact is that as long as Iran remains a big geo-strategic player, its people will suffer as a result of outside interference in its fate. Its size, its location, its oil, its massive military, its aspirations to dominate, all combine to ensure that. A pared down Iran might dodge that destiny and relieve much of the population components from constant tragedy.
Yes, of course, bless the protesters for their tragic courage and endless hope; may they overthrow the vile regime and hold its members accountable for decades of horrors. But how exactly will that happen since the ayatollahs have made sure to implicate a huge percentage of the population in complicity with their rule? That, then, is the complex scenario in which Iran has trammelled up the minorities, the bloodshed, drama, corruption, poverty, guilt and coercion. Why wouldn’t they want to secede?
And here we should pause a moment to consider the national character. Certainly heroic for repeatedly rebelling against a murderous regime armed to the teeth. But what seems to be lacking is any sense of humility or self-criticism. Where are all the mea culpas by the masses who overthrew the Shah and condemned everyone to wars and rule by Ayatollahs for decades? (Here is one unique exception by Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Laurate, notable for its rarity.) Now they’re all longing for the return of monarchy in the form of Reza Pahlavi, the Shah’s son. What sort of a time will he have inventing a new polity, administering justice, presiding over a nation divided by hatreds – with predatory outside powers bidding for influence?
We are certainly talking about a great people with a peerless culture and history, a poetic language and art heritage. But one that is perhaps too aware of its grandeur, entitlement to greatness and is willing to suffer repeatedly for it, and to make others suffer for its aspirations. Iranians should, at least, acknowledge why its ethnic minorities might dream of self-determination rather than assimilation.